Each man was shot at point-blank range, their bodies buried in graves beneath an earthen dam. Price had them followed to a remote area on a road that led out of the county, and he chased them down again. After that, they were never heard from again. (Image Credit: StMU History Project)Ĭhaney, Goodman, and Schwerner paid the fine and were released. Even if not a participant himself, Price certainly knew who was behind the crime.Ī civil rights protester is flanked by a counter-protester in Mississippi in 1964. Witnesses to the conflagration knew that the people involved were representative of the KKK/law enforcement power structure in the area. And as the three men – James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner – waited, resigned to pay the speeding fine and eager to get out of town, a crew comprising KKK members was out in the woods digging graves with a Caterpillar land excavator.ĭeputy Sheriff Cecil Price’s cover story to delay the men, that the three were suspected in the burning of the church, was shockingly cynical. Price, while operating under color of law, was also in the Ku Klux Klan. Meanwhile, the deputy sheriff’s co-conspirators were preparing for the men’s final disposition. Once at the station, the three activists were held for questioning about the destruction of the church they had just visited. Before the three men could make it out of Philadelphia, Price used his authority as an officer of the law in Neshoba County (where the city was located) to arrest them and take them to jail – for “speeding.”Ĭhaney, Goodman, Schwerner: Captives of a Corrupt Legal System He turned his patrol car around and made a beeline to pull them over. Price was out searching near the burned church for the men’s blue Ford Fairlane, a car well-known to him, when he noticed it in his rear-view mirror. When Price received word that the trio had been spotted at the ruins of a church that had been burned down earlier that month, that was all the cause he needed to kick off a long-standing plan the team had devised to eliminate the outsiders. He and his racist cohort kept the activists under stealthy surveillance as the men drove into Philadelphia, Mississippi, the morning of June 21, 1964. Three men were killed there in a terrorist attack by members of the Ku Klux Klan – cold-blooded murders that became symbolic of the price paid as African Americans sought to exercise their rights during Mississippi’s hard-fought Freedom Summer.ĭeputy Sheriff Cecil Price had those three young men in his sights all day. Among other significant events, many white Americans had their consciences awakened by acts of racist violence and lawlessness in the Deep South, especially in the state of Mississippi. The summer of 1964 was a turning point in the history of the United States and the struggle for civil rights. Editor's Note: The caption for a photograph of participants in a 1964 civil rights march in Mississippi misidentified one of the protesters as Bob Moses.
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